Our Restless Neighbours The Pathans
Postcards of Pathans who inhabited the North West Frontier Province (NWFP, now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) bordering Afghanistan were often shown with their weapons, in poses that made them see dangerous.
B & W
A Model of Rajput Beauty
This card with its carefully arranged colorful stamps was postmarked March 16, 1911 in Egypt, and likely sent in an envelope to someone as there is no address on the back and likely was destined for a collector.
Late Motilal Nehru Day, Karachi
Motilal Nehru was the father of Jawaharlal Nehru, and a very popular politician during the early struggle for Independence, and twice President of the Indian National Congress.
Government House, Peshawar
Government House in Peshawar was completed in 1903, and has been expanded while keeping the same design since. The angle and style of photographs of Government Houses throughout the Raj were meant to assert the authority of the colonial regime.
Copper Statuette of a Dancing Girl, Mohenjodaro.
A less typical side view of the famous "dancing girl" of Mohenjo-daro, part of a packet of eighteen picture postcards of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro for Rs. 1 and two annas only, that might also be a reprint of the series in Pakistan from the 1950s.
Hindu Religious Beggar
A striking studio portrait in which the viewer's eyes are drawn by to subject's wide-open gaze. Was he asked not to blink? Or did the photographer amend the negative?
A Marwaree Woman
One can imagine that the textiles worn by the woman are vibrant with color, and the postcard could be spectacular hand-tinted, but the stripes still make for a billowing effect in black and white.
Quetta. The Brewery Bridge.
Opened in 1886 by the Murree Brewery Company, the brewery was destroyed in the Quetta Earthquake of 1935 and never rebuilt (the Murree Brewery Company continues to flourish in Pakistan).
Handwritten on the back of this card, no.
Great Eastern Hotel, Calcutta
Around the time this postcard was published, H. St.J. B. Philby, the father of the famous British spy Kim Philby (born in Ambala in 1912) and then serving in India, wrote in his memoir Arabian Days (Robert Hale, 1948):
"The Great Eastern Hotel of
Preaching by Riverside, Chittagong Hill Tracts
A rather early real photo postcard from what is now Bangladesh, a part of British India that is vastly under presented in postcard production.
